


the spaces of our own hearts (hidden under oceans and rocks)

by reginamea



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash, post-3x22
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 08:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1737557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reginamea/pseuds/reginamea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one has come this time. Not this time, because the last time it was Emma coming after her, Emma with her bowed head and awkward smiles, with her hands shoved into the pockets of her jeans and "Archie made cake" as if cake would solve everything between them, suddenly. No, no one has come after her. Because now, this time, it is Emma who has betrayed her, has wounded her, has ripped away her happy ending. Emma with her wide eyes and an ocean of affection lingering just beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the spaces of our own hearts (hidden under oceans and rocks)

**Author's Note:**

> some mentions of OQ

She leaves;

deaf and blind to the world around her, she stumbles from the diner to her house on Mifflin Street. She has no reason to stay, no wish to remain where she is not wanted, again, a place filled with broken trust and broken promises. Filled with broken hearts, too. Most of them mending now, slowly, painstakingly so, but not hers. Never hers. Regina presses her fist against her breastbone and wishes she had never returned the organ to its rightful place.

Maybe she would be able to make it through this, after all, if only she did not have her heart. She presses harder, hard enough to bruise, but her mind is befuddled to the point that her fingers just will not break through the physical barrier of her flesh, her bones, to the point that her magic is turning against her. Betrayed by everyone, everyone she has ever loved, ever trusted, and even by herself. It should not be funny because it hurts, so much, but there is a dark deep sense of irony at the core of her fate, it seems, and so she chuckles, to herself, the deep sound reverberating off the high walls of her empty house.

She drags herself up the winding stairs into her bedroom and into bed. It is barely eight and yet Regina feels a bone-deep exhaustion, stifling in its sudden overflow, weary as though she had not slept in weeks. Sleep, however, eludes her, a fickle ghost as she twists and turns, and the covers wrap around her body like a cocoon, lost in her head and the mountain resting there, in her head, over her heart, her lungs. She wonders if the mountain will come down, if it will press so hard that she will be swallowed whole, disappear, into the pale fibers of her mattress.

Maybe it would be for the best, this. If she has to feel, has to suffer under her own emotional foolishness, if she cannot die, then at least what she can do is disappear. Surely no one would miss her. No one has come after her since she has left the diner, when was it, hours ago? No one has come this time. Not this time, because the last time it was Emma coming after her, Emma with her bowed head and awkward smiles, with her hands shoved into the pockets of her jeans and _Archie made cake_ as if cake would solve everything between them, suddenly.

No, no one has come after her. Because now, this time, it is Emma who has betrayed her, has wounded her, has ripped away her happy ending. Emma with her wide eyes and an ocean of affection lingering just beyond, with her _I didn’t know_ , and _I just wanted to save her life_. Emma, so very much like her mother, in this regard, then, and it hurts, the betrayal, the realization that Emma is a Charming, after all, and that Regina’s trust was misplaced, once again, when she trusts so rarely, so timidly, and, when she does, trusts so deeply.

And she thinks of Robin, whom she trusts as well, or trusted, past tense maybe (because what are they to each other, now?) and she remembers how he had told her of Marian and everything he would have done to have her back. And now that she is back, he has stormed into her arms without a thought, without a thought of Regina, just of Marian, and Roland, and family, and Regina turns onto her other side and curls into a ball so tight her bones strain and ache against the bend. She wishes again to break, for her bones and veins and sinews to snap and crumble and leave her in a pile of nothing so she does not have to feel. But she does not break, cannot break, not anymore, and yet as she listens to her heart beating against her chest, she swears she can hear it shatter anew, can feel new cracks and fissures appear in the red darkness of her chest.

And yet she feels.

Above all, she feels, so much. Too much really for this body and this broken heart and this pain is suffocating her so she throws the covers off, watches as they fall half to the floor, half tangled in her feet, and she kicks and kicks and kicks until they are finally gone, completely. Now that she is free, free of this one burden at least, she sits and slinks through the house; out the door, down the stairs, avoiding that one door to that one room that she has been avoiding for so long, the one door that has been locked shut because of the temptation lingering behind it, a past and a love and a son that would never again be as they once had been, before. Before the beginning of the end.

Before the end, really.

In the kitchen she watches through the window as a cloud passes the moon, not quite half-full, waning, and she shudders because the sight of the world, outside, releases a pulse of some thing from her belly, from somewhere deep within her, and she turns her head away as the cloud retreats and the moon reappears in all its barely half-full glory.

To the study, then, and the dark inside and the curtains drawn that swallow her whole in shadows. She lingers in the doorway, one foot inside, half-way between here and there. Here, at least, she can breathe again, can feel the pull of the glass decanter resting just in sight, can see the space of her own heart taking form in this, here, more so than anywhere else. In the dark wood and the warm colors and the fire place that is all black, now, caught in the darkness of the night. Here, at last, she can feel herself stilling, finally, and just be.

Through the stillness, then, breaks a noise, a knocking, a persistent sound at the front door, and Regina is so utterly still, at this moment, in herself, that she does not flinch, does not startle at this sudden disruption of the emptiness around her. Instead, she hovers, again, somewhere between here and there, with her ears ringing, with her name ringing in her ears.

“Regina!”

And the voice that rings through her halls, through the door, of course, is hers, is Emma’s. Emma with her unwavering voice that now wavers, as though Regina’s name on her lips is a burden that is too heavy to carry, as though some thing is pressing on her throat, lingering on her chest, forcing all air down into her lungs instead of out. And yet it rings out.

And now Regina's stillness falters.

Because why is Emma at her door, now, now after hours have passed and the hurt and the anger have festered deep behind her eyes? Maybe something has also been festering inside Emma, within the clutching skin around her fingers, within her blood pumping to and fro from the blinding light residing in her chest. Maybe, just maybe, that spark has dimmed, slightly, deep within, under a certain weight that Regina does not name but feels resonate within herself.

(Regret)

“Regina!”

(Guilt)

"Regina!"

(Hurt)

"Regina!"

Her name seems to reverberate with all the unspokenness between them like a chord pulled taught between their hearts, filling the spaces between _here_ and _there_ with could-have-beens and should-have-beens and aborted chances, filling the spaces between _Emma_ and _Regina_ with too much and not enough and barely-there middle-grounds that are precarious and fickle like the East Wind.

"Regina, please!"

And Emma's voice grows weaker still, flickers like a candle caught in a volatile gust, rears like Rocinante in the final moments of his birth, on the very last syllable, and then falls silent altogether just as Emma's hand falls flat against the door, one last time, and then nothing.

Nothing, then, is what undoes the stupor that has kept Regina chained to the threshold of her office for these past few minutes, these long moments that have passed between _then_ and _now_ in what appears now almost akin to a dream, maybe a nightmare, rather, and yet it is no dream, no dream of any form, but reality. She knows, because no dream would bring about this particular scenario, would bring Emma to her door. None of her dreams, her nightmares, at least.

So in reality, then, Regina finds herself moving, her feet, her knees, her legs shifting of their own volition, bending under some deeper recognition that her mind is not yet privy to even while some thing tugs at the muscle in her chest, tugs and plucks and pulls until Regina is at the front door, the barest of distances now separating her from the outside world, mere inches of wood and lacquer and brass locks.

And yet there seems to be an unbridgeable divide in these few inches and Regina, far from the first time in her life, marvels at the dimensions of space, such terrible, damning dimensions that seem to take her as their own personal fool, reveling in playing with the soundness of her heart and of her soul, again and again and again.

And again.

Because why else could Emma be at her door, now, after Everything?

It seems that, now, her _soul_ is privy to something that her mind is not, because her mouth opens, her lips curl, and air, a breath, escapes from her that might have been words, might have been a question, might have been a sigh.

"Go away, Emma."

And of course her words have quite the opposite effect as intended. Of course, with Emma Swan being ..., well, Emma Swan, she seems to have an inbred sense of disregarding Regina's every word, it is what she always does and always has done, and this time is no different.

Like the fluttering of a heartbeat, the sounds of Emma's voice and Emma's fingers again waft through the door, plunging into her ear and into her head and her thoughts and hastening a path into her belly, thrusting sharply before settling and coiling low, planting a seed of some thing that Regina can feel rooting and growing with every rambling word pouring from Emma's lips,

Rooting and growing with every _I'm sorry_ and _please_ and _Regina_ and _I didn't know_ and the seed is blooming into a rosebush, wild and untamed, and Regina feels it bursting out of her, clawing its way out through her eyes and through her spine and through the tips of her fingers until petals fall from her mouth like confessions ...

                                             ( look, she wants to say, look what you have done to me, look what has become of me  
                                             because of you, look how you have corrupted this tentative thing between us with your  
                                                                                 utter goodness, with the blindness of your purity

                                                 she wants to say, look how you have wounded me, _you_ did this to me  
                                                                            you have made me trust you and look what good that has done me )

... petals in the form of _No_ and _Emma_ and _Please_ and _Go_ and so much more in the silence between these words that seems to waft through the door, lingers like a fragrance between _here_ and _there_ , clotting the spaces between Emma and Regina like stagnant air pregnant with rain in the moments just before the storm.

She says, "please, Emma," she says, "go away," she says, "please, I cannot talk to you right now, I cannot see you, not now, please, Emma, just go," and she presses her ear against the door to pick up any sound, a hum, a crack, anything, from Emma. And there it is, the ghost of a whisper from the other side, the ghost of a touch of a hand moving across the polished wood, in a quiet dialogue between wood and skin, and fingers and ears and hearts.

"I never," Emma breathes, in a voice that is low and weighted, "I never meant to hurt you, Regina," and Regina digs her fingers into the door, grasps and claws as though she could somehow reach through the door, reach through the wood and connect her fingers to Emma's, to join in this silent communication that is happening all around them, connect their fingers like protons and electrons, like wires. She pushes her hands against the cool wood to keep herself anchored, to keep herself from flinging the door open and herself at Emma, because what could she do, what would she do, she has no answer to either of these questions, and so she remains still, anchored.

Instead she says, "please go," she all but pleads, and finally, finally Emma hears her, finally she is moving, the heels of her boots heavy on the stone step outside, scraping as she turns, once, then twice - "I'm not giving up, Regina" - and then a third time, and then Emma walks away, taking the storm with her and scattering rose petals into all directions, North, West, South.

She remains;

in the darkness of her empty house, shadows flit across the high walls, weaving tales of anger and hope and regret, like memories of a love, and of a son, and of a savior; in the stillness that settles over her once more, she listens to the rapid cacophony of her heart, and she realizes, somewhere deep within, that her heart is beating sharply in her chest, pulsing blood from her head to her toes to her ears, a terrible and glorious light throbbing behind her eyes that now moves into the cracks and fissures of her dark red heart and fills them slowly, bit by bit.

And Regina can breathe again.

 

 

FIN


End file.
